


Arthur and the Quest for the Magical Coffee Cup of Happiness

by high_spring_tide



Category: Arthurian Mythology, Arthurian Mythology & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, I hate the melancholy inevitability of camelot's fall in the arthurian mythos, and yet somehow that ended up translating over to this modern au, coffee shop AU, mentions of arthur/guinevere - Freeform, merlin is basically a cryptid in this, not exactly canon typical violence but a grown man does get his ass handed to him by a turkey, rated T for some swearing i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-23 08:33:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23208628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/high_spring_tide/pseuds/high_spring_tide
Summary: Lancelot strode into the room, double doors slamming behind him. "I hereby summon a council of war," he said."Sit down and stop being so goddamn overdramatic, Lance," Gawaine said.“They’re opening a Starbucks like barely a block from here,” Lancelot said.“Shit,” Gawaine said. “I’d better get Arthur.”An AU in which Arthur runs a coffeeshop, Merlin is the mysterious owner, and Arthur and his friends must fight to save their business with every tool at their disposal, from pastries and really good customer service to a legendary coffee mug.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Arthur and the Quest for the Magical Coffee Cup of Happiness

**Author's Note:**

> For windward_shore, who reminds me that all Arthurian myths are equally canon.
> 
> Flashbacks are in italics.

Lancelot strode into the room, double doors slamming behind him. "I hereby summon a council of war," he said.

"Sit down and stop being so goddamn overdramatic, Lance," Gawaine said. “If this is about basketball, I Do Not Care.”

“They’re opening a Starbucks like barely a block from here,” Lancelot said.

“You’re kidding,” said Gwen, pulling up a chair. “Where?”

“You know that antique store that closed around the corner? That’s under construction now? There’s a sign on the fence, says Coming Soon! Starbucks.”

“Shit,” Gawaine said. “I’d better get Arthur.”

It was a good time for bad news, pragmatically speaking: about three in the afternoon on a Sunday, and pretty much the whole gang was there. So Bors and Kay put away their laptops, and Baldwin put away his newspaper. Gawaine, who’d arrived early for his shift as usual, got his feet off the table, and Gwen left the counter to mind itself. Galahad went to get Arthur and Gary from the kitchen. And that just left Percy, who was out of town.

Well, and Merlin. But you never could tell when he was going to appear.

“It’ll probably be okay,” Gary said, when everyone had assembled and Lancelot had given the news a second time. “I mean, we can handle a little competition, right?”

“Competition from a $100 billion dollar company, with national brand recognition, economies of scale, and a better location than ours?” Baldwin said. “We’ll lose all the commuters.”

“We’ll lose the commuters. We’ll probably keep the regulars,” Gwen said.

“Can we stay afloat with just the regulars?” asked Lancelot. They looked at each other uneasily.

Kay was the first to break the silence. “There must be something we can do. Some zoning bylaw they’re violating, some ordinance about construction and noise, community values. . . we could appeal to the selectmen.”

“Yeah, let’s fight this thing!” Bors said.

“I don’t know,” Baldwin said. “Starbucks is pretty much a juggernaut. The mindless march of progress, and all that.”

They turned to Arthur. He toyed with a napkin for a minute, thinking. “I think we should explore fighting them, maybe go to city hall. I think we should be prepared for them to open, though. I think we should focus on playing to our strengths, all the things that make Camelatte unique. Make it so much more than a Starbucks could ever be.”

There were nods. “There’s a new recipe I’ve been wanting to try,” Gary said. “Pumpkin fritters.”

“Yeah, see how quickly you can start making those,” Arthur said. “Gwen, you always make amazing drinks, keep up the good work. And I think I’m going to try to rearrange the shifts a little bit, to put you, Gawaine, in during the busy times, since you’re great at keeping the line moving without making things seem stressful. I’ll see if I can spruce up our decor, keep it fun and seasonal.”

It didn’t sound like enough, Arthur knew. “We play to our strengths,” he said. “Really, that’s all we can do.”

There was a pause. “Actually, there might be something else,” Gawaine said. He contrived to look somehow both sheepish and determined. “I heard one of the customers talking about it--a regular from back the last time Camelatte was open. We could try to find the Magical Coffee Cup of Happiness.”

“The what?”

“The Magical Coffee Cup of Happiness. Apparently when Camelatte was open before, there was this one mug everyone always hoped they’d get, because if they served you’re coffee in it--”

“It would bring happiness?” Kay said, dryly.

“Your coffee would be delicious and always the right temperature. You wouldn’t ever be late to work or wherever you were going, and the rest of your day would go great. And it worked on the other people at the table, too, a bit--everyone would have a good time, arguments would cease, the whole thing.”

“So what happened to it?” Bors asked.

“It went missing a few months before Camelatte closed. One of the employees brought it home with them, probably.”

“Suspicious,” said Lancelot, starting to sound optimistic. “So we find the coffee cup, we bring happiness to the customers--”

“The regulars stay, word of mouth brings in more people,” Gwen said. “Plus people will come again and again to try to get the mug. It’s like a lottery.”

“And finding it shouldn’t be too tricky. Just track down the former employees. Merlin’s probably got a list,” Lancelot said.

“How’s that for playing to our strengths!” said Gawaine.

“Look, guys, you can’t really believe--” Kay started, then looked around the table. “Oh, you do, don’t you.”

“Come on, Kay,” Arthur said. “How much weirder is it than anything else that’s happened around here?”

Kay just sighed. “I suppose it’s worth a shot.”

* * *

_Arthur was right. Nothing normal ever really happened at Camelatte. Weirdest of all, perhaps, was how Arthur had started working there. The summer after Arthur finished high school, Kay, newly graduated from law school, had landed an interview to intern at his dream company. He’d sailed through the phone interview, the Skype interview, the preliminary in-person interview. But then he was supposed to interview with the upper management, half of whom would be video conferencing in from overseas. Because of the time difference, the interview was scheduled for five AM, and thirty minutes before it began, Kay was barely awake and desperately in need of coffee. And Arthur, anxious on his brother’s behalf and eager to help however he could, went out on a last minute coffee run._

_It was four thirty in the morning, and absolutely nothing was open. Arthur ran up and down the gray city streets, hoping for some kind of miracle. A Starbucks, a Dunkin Donuts--surely some kind of chain had to be open this early to serve early-morning commuters, right? Didn’t cities never truly sleep? But not even the convenience stores were open yet._

_Then, on a quiet side street, he saw a coffee shop with the lights on. Probably nothing, he thought--probably they keep them on all night to discourage burglars. But he raced up the block anyway, and looked in the window, and saw an old man behind the counter. And on the door, the hours: Mon-Sun, 12am-12am. He yanked open the door--a string of bells jingled--and hurried up to the counter._

_“Large americano, one shot of hazelnut, two extra shots of espresso,” he said, trying to get his breath back. The old man made the drink, so efficiently that Arthur couldn’t complain, even with the minutes to Kay’s interview counting down. Arthur threw a ten dollar bill down on the counter, and was out of the coffee shop so fast the bell on the door was jingling as the old man was still saying goodbye to him._

_He was halfway down the street before he processed what the old man had said. “Until we meet again.” Weird._

_He got the coffee to Kay minutes before 5 AM. He drank it, and in a jittery, post-espresso buzz, nailed the interview._

_Later, after Kay and their dad had finished analyzing who asked what questions and why, and what Kay said, and how their facial expressions had seemed, Kay looked at the paper coffee cup on the desk next to him and did a double take. “You got me coffee from Camelatte? How, that place is literally never open?”_

_“What do you mean, never open?” Arthur said. “It said on the door it’s open 24-7.”_

_“Oh, sure, that’s what it says, but if you try to get in it’s literally always locked. Sometimes you can even see the owner inside, but he doesn’t, like come unlock the door or anything.”_

_Arthur thought Kay was making the whole thing up, and Kay thought the whole thing was really weird, so they headed across the city back to the coffee shop. It was there, right where Arthur had left it. Kay walked up the stoop, pulled the door handle. It moved, but only slightly, the way a door will shift in the lock. He pulled again, tried pushing, tried jiggling the handle, tried pressing down as hard as he could. No luck. “See?” he said, looking at Arthur. “Locked.”_

_“But it’s ten AM--the lights are on--look, the guy behind the counter is right there!” It was the same old man from earlier, and he was openly watching Kay while making absolutely no attempt whatsoever to help him._

_“Well, you try then,” Kay said. Arthur stepped past him, grabbed the door handle, opened the door. The bell jingled._

_“Weird,” said Kay. “Let me try that.” Arthur stepped out again, let the door close. Kay tried. It was locked. “There’s got to be a trick to it.” he said. “Show me what you did.”_

_So Arthur showed him what he did, which was open the door the normal way. The door opened. Kay tried, mirroring his movements. The door remained shut._

_After about five more minutes of this, they realized they were making a spectacle of themselves to the old man watching from the counter and decided to just head into the coffeeshop. “Sorry, but are you open?” Kay asked._

_“Camelatte is open for all those who can enter,” the old man said. “But only the worthy can open the door.”_

_Neither brother really knew what to say to this, so Kay ordered another Americano, and Arthur ordered a latte. They sat at the counter, and as they drank their coffee, the old man introduced himself as Merlin. “Oh, I’m Arthur,” said Arthur, “and this is my brother Kay.”_

_“I know,” the old man said. Then he told them about the glory days of Camelatte, how it had been a gathering place for the whole community, how it had meant something, something warm and bright in a cold and commercial world. How he was too old, really, to be running the whole business alone, and how he’d been forced to close the shop a decade ago when the old manager left. How he hated job interviews--”as though you can learn a person’s nature in forty minutes of staged nonsense! What an insult to the vastness of the human condition!”--and so he had put the special lock on the door._

_How in ten years, no one had been able to open it, until that day. Until Arthur. Then he offered Arthur a position as manager of Camelatte._

* * *

Tracking down a list of former Camelatte employees turned out to be harder than Lancelot had expected. They never found out whether Merlin had a list or not. Every time anyone asked him, he managed to change the subject so subtly the asker didn’t notice until half an hour later. Eventually, when they’d given up asking, Arthur had found employee names and (mostly outdated) contact information on some old tax documents buried at the bottom of a cabinet.

Percy, Bors, and Galahad volunteered to take the lead on tracking down the Mug of Happiness, with Lancelot and Gawaine helping out when they weren’t on duty. Of the six former employees mentioned in the records, two had phone numbers listed that still worked. Both of them assured Bors, who’d called them, that they’d never taken any mugs, plates, utensils, or other kitchen apparatus home from Camelatte. They were happy to hear the shop was open again, though, and they wished them the best.

Three of the remaining four they were able to contact through Facebook and Twitter. They, too, had never taken home any mugs, although one did still have her apron. She sounded pretty guilty about the situation, and kept offering to mail the apron back to them. Lancelot checked in with Arthur, who said to tell her she could keep it.

Tracking down the sixth former employee took nearly two weeks, but they managed it in the end. She’d moved to another city, started going by her middle name, gotten married and changed her last name. They finally managed to message her on Linkedin, of all places, and she gave them her phone number when she heard they were from Camelatte. “Don’t get your hopes up,” Lancelot told Galahad before they called her. “She probably won’t know anything helpful, either.”

“The Magical Coffee Cup of Happiness? Yeah, I remember that,” the woman said. She told them that before Camelatte had closed the last time, she had indeed brought it home with her. “It didn’t seem right for something like that to sit around in a closed-up shop, gathering dust,” she said. She’d worried that it would be selfish, keeping the mug for herself, though. And it didn’t seem to have any powers when she drank coffee from it alone. Only when she hosted tons of family and friends did it seem to return to its former magic. About eight months ago, she’d decided to donate it to a church.

“Which church?!” Galahad said. She didn’t remember, just that it had been a church in the same city as Camelatte, before she’d moved. And she didn’t know whether the church was planning to keep it themselves, or sell it at a bargain sale, or donate it to a second-hand store.

There was silence for a few minutes after Galahad hung up the phone. “Okay, so we make a list of churches,” he said at last.

* * *

_Later, Arthur wasn’t really sure why he had accepted the position. His dad was allowing him to take a gap year between high school and college to Find Himself, on the condition he held down a full time job while doing it. That was one reason, probably. The job paid well. That was another. It would look good on his resume, having management experience at his age. And it came with health, vision, and dental. He’d liked the old man. He liked coffee._

_And despite Kay’s prophecies of doom, it had worked out pretty well. Arthur cleaned up the shop, learned the ordering system and how to run the coffee machines. Sometimes Merlin was around to help. Sometimes he would disappear for days on end with no explanation provided. Arthur was pretty sure he lived above the shop, but he couldn’t find a staircase leading up to the second floor._

_When Arthur had accepted the job offer, Merlin had given him a key to the shop, so he could unlock the door properly. And once the door was unlocked, people started to show up. People asking for coffee, of course, but also people asking for jobs. There was Gwen, who could make the most amazing latte art Arthur had ever seen, and Gawaine, who was impossibly polite to even the rudest of customers. There was Gawaine’s younger brother Gary, who was a pretty good barista but seemed to prefer working back in the kitchen. He made amazingly good muffins and quiches, which was a huge windfall for Camelatte. Arthur had been stocking pastries from local bakeries, but it was good for Camelatte to have its own food prepared in house. There was Lancelot. Arthur was pretty sure Lancelot was the most perfect person he’d ever met: he’s tall, good-looking, a star athlete on like three Division I NCAA teams and impossibly good natured. Lest anyone take him for a dumb jock, he was also a student in the honors college. Arthur wasn’t sure how he found the time to hold down even a part-time job, but he was happy to have his help around the coffee shop._

_Gwen had invented most of the drinks on the menu, though Gawaine, who was into tea, had invented a super-potent matcha latte he called the Green Knight. Arthur wasn’t much of a tea person himself, but Gawaine claimed it could wake the dead._

_A lot of their customers were commuters, rushing in and rushing out again. Still, they started to get regulars, and plenty of people stop to grab a table and eat a pastry, maybe read for a while. Plenty of people take the time to chat with the staff. Some were old regulars, from the last time Camelatte was open, but they got a steady following of young people too. By the time Arthur had been in the job for a few months, he and the staff were already really close, and they’d befriended some of the regulars as well. There’s Bors, and Percy, whose accent, somehow both highbrow and rustic Arthur can’t place, and Baldwin. There’s Galahad, who Lancelot seems to have already known from somewhere, and who may actually be even more perfect than Lancelot. And Kay was always dropping by with his laptop to work on stuff for his new job._

_The cafe has a definite homey vibe, Arthur thought. Employees regularly drop by for coffee on days they don’t have a shift, or arrive early or leave late to sit around with their friends. When business was slow, whoever’s on duty would leave the counter for a while to sit with the staff’s friends among the regulars. They even have their regular spot. None of the furniture in Camelatte matched, per se, except in that it pretty much all wobbled. The tables were all different sizes, some square, some rectangles, in dark wood and light wood and in one case, painted blue. Arthur’s crew, however, always hung out around the one round table. At square or rectangle tables, you eventually run out of space, but at a round table you can always add more chairs._

* * *

It was amazing, Lancelot thought, how many churches there could be in one medium-sized city. He didn’t understand, for one thing, why there were so many different denominations. How many types of Christian could there be? And how much difference could it possibly make? And it wasn’t like there was only one church per denomination, either. Most denominations seemed to have two or three, at least. Little churches and big churches, fancy churches and plain churches. Lancelot was sure he’d been to dozens in the last few weeks.

They were surprisingly willing to let the gang poke around in their kitchens and storage areas once they explained what was going on, though. They usually tried to find some chores or odd jobs they could help with in return, washing a few dishes here, doing a bit of landscaping there. And the church ladies were always sympathetic when their search turned up no results.

Churches that kept goods on hand for future bargain sales were the worst, though, Lancelot thought. Then looking for their mug wasn’t just a matter of looking through kitchen cabinets. They had to dig through piles of old clothes, and stained lampshades, and--”What even is this crap?” he said, holding up something that looked like half a plush frog.

“Toilet seat warmer, maybe?” Percy said. “Anyway, it’s not as weird as this,” he added, pointing to an ashtray shaped like an anatomically-correct heart.

“Gross,” Lancelot agreed.

“Yeah, who even buys this, anyway?” said Bors. “I don’t care how much of a bargain it is.”

“Yeah, kind of pathetic, isn’t it,” said Lancelot. “I mean, spending hours of your life cleaning all of this stuff, sorting it, piling it up like someone’s going to want it.”

“I mean, I suppose they’re doing a service to the community,” Percy started.

“What, by spreading bad taste?” Lancelot said, waving a lime green, fringed leather jacket in the air. “Burning this would be a service to the community.”

The others snorted in laughter. Only Galahad was silent.

-||-

It was a quiet morning at Camelatte. Better start getting used to these, Arthur thought to himself. Just Gary in the back making cinnamon rolls, and Arthur minding the counter, and a few women at the tables in the window. And Kay at a corner table with his laptop out, as usual.

“Hey, Kay, you’re a lawyer,” Arthur said, walking over to his brother.

“Technically, yes, I have both graduated law school and passed the bar, and thereafter gotten a job at a law firm, so therefore, yes, I am technically a lawyer.”

“Oh, I see how it is. When you want to impress someone at a party, it’s ‘Oh look at me, I’m a Lawyer!’ but as soon as I want to ask you something, it’s ‘technically this,’ and ‘technically that,’” Arthur said.

“You’ve asked me for favors before,” Kay said calmly, and took another sip of his coffee.

“I was just hoping you could look into that thing you talked about at the meeting,” Arthur said. “You know, fighting Starbucks? Seeing if they’re violating an ordinance or a bylaw?”

“Oh, yeah, that,” Kay said.

“Yeah.” said Arthur. “That.”

“Right. Well, I was kind of thinking that was more of a You project,” Kay said. “Like, you would put together a presentation for the selectmen about how important Camelatte is for the community, how Starbuck opening would be Against the Character of the Neighborhood, that sort of thing.”

“Well, that sure sounds like it could benefit from someone who is Technically A Lawyer helping me finding out if Starbucks is breaking any rules, doesn’t it?” Arthur said. “How about I handle making the presentation on Camelatte and the community, you handle the opposition research?”

Kay drank more coffee, considered. “Deal,” he said.

Arthur went back to the counter and started taking notes. He’d meant what he said at the meeting. Camelatte was so much more than just a cafe, and not just for the quality of its coffee or food or atmosphere. They always made a point of being a place where people would be comfortable to sit and stay, to have a nice warm place out of the elements with a bathroom and wifi for the cost of a cup of coffee or a cookie. Or nothing at all, really. They’d let people stay all afternoon without buying anything on more than one occasion. In the summer, they set out a bowl of water for dogs on the sidewalk, and above it, a jug of water for people. There was a leave-a-book, take-a-book cart in the corner that saw a surprising amount of turnover. A bulletin board advertising everything from local bands and artists to jobs to cheap apartment listings. And every evening, Gawaine took the leftover food and coffee down the street to give to the homeless people that lived there.

Arthur had started working at Camelatte thinking it would be a pretty good gap year experience. One year had become two and a half, so far, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever want to be anywhere else. He just hoped that the city didn’t want him--want Camelatte--to go anywhere, either.

-||-

Some time after eleven that night, Arthur got a call from Kay. “Hey, can you come pick me up?” he said, in his don’t-worry-everything’s-fine voice.

“Sure, where are you?” Arthur said.

Kay was in jail. He’d punched one of the Starbucks developers in the face.

“Kay, when I said ‘fighting Starbucks,’ I didn’t mean--” Arthur began, when he saw him.

“I know, I know,” Kay said. “But enough about me. How’s your presentation coming?”

* * *

_“Hey, are you going to do anything about that back alley?” Kay asked. Arthur had been managing Camelatte for a few weeks, at that point, and was just starting to feel like he had a handle on things._

_“What do you mean, do something about the back alley?” he replied._

_“I mean, do something about that feral turkey that lives there. The one that attacks anyone who goes near? Including Gary, taking out the trash? Ringing any bells?”_

_“I’m a cafe manager, not Animal Control,” Arthur said._

_“You can’t keep putting the trash bins out front forever, you know. It looks bad,” said Kay._

_“Yeah, plus the alley connects to Park Street,” Gwen said. “We’re tucked away on a side street here, but if we cleaned up the alley and put up a sign, we could get a bunch of foot traffic from Park.”_

_“Can’t clean up the alley without getting rid of the turkey, though.” said Kay, and then, “Bet you’re too scared.”_

_Arthur had grown up with Kay, and he was too familiar by now with the sort of trouble that came with rising to Kay’s bait to give in. Except that Gwen was there. Gwen, with her cinnamon colored hair and infectious laugh. Gwen, who was so impossibly out of his league, except that sometimes Arthur would see how she looked at him, and start to think that maybe she didn’t know that. He didn’t want Gwen to think he was scared._

_So Arthur grabbed a broom, put on a pair of potholders for protection, and headed out the back door. He tried beating the broom against the wall, hoping to scare the turkey off. The turkey, which had been idly investigating the ground a few feet away, took off at a dead run. Unfortunately, it ran directly at Arthur. He raised up the broom in front of him, hoping to knock the turkey away, but in the last few feet the turkey jumped?? flew?? a few feet into the air, and he missed._

_The first blow from the turkey’s wings knocked the broom from Arthur’s grasp. The second blow caught him across the head so hard he wondered if the turkey had somehow picked up the broom and hit him with it. The third knocked him flat onto his back on the alley floor. After that, the turkey hopped up onto his chest and started making its way up to his head. Could turkeys peck your eyes out? Arthur wondered. Claw them out? Certainly the turkey’s claws, where they were digging into his chest, felt sharp. He started to panic. What if it trod on his neck, punctured his jugular?_

_He’d never thought he’d face death by turkey._

_That was when Merlin showed up. Arthur, from his vantage point on the floor of the alley, couldn’t see exactly what he did, but there was an odd feeling, as though the air had momentarily expanded, then contracted again. And then the turkey was off him, and Merlin was looming over his face. “Rise, Arthur,” he said._

_Arthur got up. Nothing seemed to be broken, although absolutely everything seemed to be bruised, and he was pretty sure some of his turkey-claw wounds were bleeding. The turkey, curled over in a corner of the alley, seemed to be sleeping. “He will trouble you no longer,” said Merlin, following Arthur’s gaze._

_Arthur swallowed hard. He didn’t want to ask what Merlin had done. He liked the old man--of course he did, he was kind and wise and generous--but sometimes Things happened around him, freaky things, and Arthur sometimes thought he wouldn’t wish Merlin’s wrath even on his worst enemy._

_Kind of embarrassing that so far his worst enemy was shaping up to be a turkey, but still. Then he saw his phone on the alley pavement, screen cracked, and started to feel less sympathetic. And his other pocket! “My key is gone!” he said. His key to Camelatte, that Merlin had given him his first day, that let the door be unlocked properly!_

_There followed a few desperate minutes, in which Arthur looked frantically for the key among the trash on the ground of the alley, and Merlin looked on in bemusement. “I guess it’s just . . . gone,” he said a while later. “I’m so sorry, Merlin.”_

_“Come with me,” Merlin said, striding out of the alley. Arthur followed him, through street after street and alley after alley. Soon, he didn’t recognize where they were, and when he did recognize a shop here, a corner there, they didn’t seem to intersect according to the rules of normal geography. Finally they arrived, in a little tucked-away square paved in cobblestones. In the center was a fountain._

_“Look in the water,” Merlin said. Arthur did. There were coins on the bottom, and wrappers, and under some of the coins. . . a key. Arthur looked at Merlin, who nodded. He reached for the key, and found that the water bent the light more than he expected, throwing his depth perception off. And as he tried to reach the key, something shifted in the reflections in the water. Not just Arthur, and Merlin, and the buildings and clouds above, but. . . something else. Somebody else? The water felt oddly cold._

_Just when the third face in the water was about to come into focus, his hand closed over the key, and he pulled his hand out of the fountain. “The key is yours,” Merlin said. “It is a key you shall not lose, and it shall open the door of Camelatte for as long as Camelatte is yours.”_

_“. . . thanks?” Arthur said. “Merlin, in the fountain, I thought I saw a face. A lady’s face.”_

_“Hers is the fountain, and the key, and many things besides. You have her blessing, and now you owe her a favor. Do not hesitate when she claims it!” Merlin said._

_“Okay,” said Arthur, swallowing._

_He and Merlin had walked back to Camelatte, and Arthur had gone to the back alley to check on the turkey. It turned out that the turkey was fine, just sleeping, and when it woke up they found that it was now completely tame. And rather fond of all of them, particularly Arthur._

_They swept out the trash from the alley, and gave the walls a fresh coat of paint, and made a little sign to put at the Park Street entrance directing people to Camelatte. The turkey had showed no signs of leaving, so Baldwin had gone to City Records and looked up exactly how far into the alley Camelatte’s property line extended. They had built a little pen on their property in the back alley and made the turkey a little house in it. Gwen had christened the turkey Pellinore. Gary came up with the idea of selling cracked corn to customers to feed Pelly, and he had become one of the cafe’s attractions._

* * *

The twenty-first church had a little shop. They were selling coffee cups of every size and color, little delicate tea cups, even a set of Santa- and reindeer-shaped mugs. Nothing that matched the description of the Coffee Cup of Happiness they had, which was admittedly pretty vague. Still, “you’ll know it when you see it,” the customer Gawaine had spoken to had said, and the former employee who’d brought it home had said the same.

If they were right, so far they hadn’t seen it.

“We have some more boxes up on a shelf if you boys would like to see them,” said Mrs. Grenly, who was showing them around. “I’ll just get a stool.”

Percy, who was tall, stopped her and got the box down himself. The Coffee Cup wasn’t there, either, and Mrs. Grenly seemed as disappointed as any of them. The gang pruned the church hedges after that, and Percy changed a light bulb in the parish hall.

At the twenty-second church, it was more boxes of storage for future bargain sales. The clothes were sorted by size and color, and the books were arranged alphabetically. Even the mugs were lined up by size, and so the gang was able to check them all in under a quarter hour.

The twenty-third church didn’t collect home goods, only non-perishable food, and all their own mugs were part of a matched set somebody had donated.

The twenty-fourth church was the most fun. The assistant rector had organized a soccer tournament for Disadvantaged Youth, and some of the women helping run it had invited the gang to join in for a game. Lancelot scored a goal, and Galahad got a hat trick.

At the twenty-fifth church, they went through their attic storage, then spent the afternoon making casseroles for the soup kitchen dinner. Gawaine called Gary, who wasn’t working, to come help make pies.

They were vacuuming the twenty-seventh church sanctuary when Kay stopped and switched off his vacuum. “You know what I’ve been thinking?” he said.

“What, Lance?” said Percy.

“I’ve been thinking, I was wrong before, about the church ladies.”

“You, the great Lancelot, you were wrong about something?” Percy said.

“I thought it was silly, how devoted they were to things that didn’t really matter. Carefully packaging and putting away ancient bric-a-brac. . . But I was wrong. I was being thoughtless and flip and arrogant. It matters, it Means Something, because they really care. They really think they’re helping people. And they are--all those cheap clothes and homegoods going to people that really need them, or maybe someone who does have clothes but here they get to buy a nice shirt and it feels like a luxury and it makes them happy, and all the cans of soup and boxes of pasta and homemade casseroles and maybe they’re not the best cooks ever but they Care and that’s what matters. They just Care about people and they try to help them however they can.”

“Well, so do we, I suppose,” said Bors.

“So do we, but it’s different for us. We just do it to be decent, really, or because That’s Just What You Do. But they Believe in something. Something bigger than themselves. And then they actually go out, and they actually try to live their lives by it.” He paused. “I just think that’s really important, is all. I think we could all stand to be a little more like that.”

“Yeah,” said Percy, and Bors nodded. Galahad was silent, again, but the light from a stained glass window fell across his face, and he had an odd expression, as though lost in thought.

-||-

Arthur wiped down the window table with a sigh. The cafe was bustling, this afternoon. It was objectively a good thing, but it was odd seeing the round table occupied by a group of people he didn’t know. It felt like ages since he’d sat there with his friends. It was just him and Gwen and Gary at Camelatte today. Lancelot and Gawaine had been scarce, ever since they’d started looking for the Coffee Mug of Happiness, and he hadn’t seen Percy, Bors, or Galahad at all. Baldwin had mostly stopped coming too, probably because most of the group wasn’t around.

His presentation to the selectmen had gone decently well, despite Kay’s recent brush with the wrong side of the law. They’d listened to his points seriously and, at the end, commended him for his efforts. And then they’d told him they’d certainly keep his concerns in mind when considering future permit applications. There was nothing to be done, they’d said, about Starbucks. They’d already been approved, and what was done was done.

“I wonder what the others are up to,” he said to Gwen, not for the first time.

“You know the Mug of Happiness might just be a myth,” she said.

“It’s not that,” Arthur replied. “I mean, it would be wonderful if they found it, and it works, and it helps save Camelatte. But it’s just . . . I miss them. I miss having all of our friends here.”

“It does feel wrong without them, doesn’t it,” Gwen said. “Even when the place is full of customers, it feels empty.”

“Yeah, and I know they’re trying to save the shop but like. We might be closing soon, these might be our last few months or weeks here, even. And I just wish we were spending them with our friends.”

“Me too,” Gwen said, putting her hand on top of Arthur’s. “Me too.”

The bell on the door jingled, then, and Arthur looked up to see who was there. Just another stranger.

* * *

_There were drawbacks to being open all night. One night on one of Lancelot’s shifts, he’d been waiting a table with a quartet of women. Camelatte was a half-service cafe, which meant you ordered at the counter but if you stayed long enough, someone would come to your table with free coffee refills. It usually wasn’t a big deal, but these women--they seemed to be in their thirties, and Lancelot was pretty sure they’d been drinking before they’d come to Camelatte--these women were ordering refills at an alarming rate, and Lancelot was pretty sure the coffee wasn’t what they were interested in. Every time he’d come to their table, they’d look him up and down and giggle. And he knew they were checking out his ass every time he walked away. Arthur always said the staff could throw out any customers who behaved badly, but he didn’t want to make a big deal of it, not in front of the whole cafe._

_The next time he came over to the table, one of the women cocked her head at him. “Who do you think is prettiest, out of the four of us?” she said. “Come on, you can be honest.”_

_“Yeah, tell us,” another woman chimed in._

_“It’s me, isn’t it?” said a third. “Go ahead, we won’t be offended.”_

_Lancelot was struggling for a response when a woman about his age whom he’d never seen before came up to him. “So sorry I’m late for my shift,” she said._

_“Um, no problem?” said Lancelot._

_“Yeah, I’m sorry you had to cover for me like that. Why don’t you just give me your apron and I can take over,” the woman said._

_So Lancelot had given her his apron and the coffee carafe, and she had taken over bringing refills to the customers. And the table of giggly ladies had left not long after that._

_“Thank you,” said Lancelot, after they’d left and he’d taken his job back. “I really appreciate that. If there’s anything I can do to return the favor, just let me know.”_

_“You wouldn’t happen to be any good at bowling, would you?” the young woman said._

_“Oh, I’m great at bowling.”_

_“It’s just that my father is competing in the Rotary club bowling tournament tomorrow night, and he’s such a bragger, he bet our neighbor five hundred dollars that his team would win the tournament. Only he’s terrible at bowling. Could you join his team?”_

_A favor is a favor, so Lancelot joined the bowling team, and they’d won the tournament. He was always happy to have the chance to help people out. They all did their best to help people, at Camelatte. All of the staff, and most of their friends, had done free shoveling and raking at customer’s requests, and Gary had even helped a couple of college kids he’d never met move their furniture into their fourth story walk-up. And Kay was always taking on pro bono work for people in need of help he’d met at Camelatte. They liked to think of themselves as a light in a dark world, and none of them would dream of refusing a request for help._

* * *

In the end, the gang searched every church in the city, to no avail. Maybe the Coffee Cup of Happiness had been sold at a church sale already. Maybe they’d found it, and the former customer had been wrong, and they hadn’t known it when they’d seen it. Maybe it had never existed at all.

They’d lost Galahad, Lancelot explained. After they’d finished their list of churches, he and Percy and Bors had been talking about how nice it would be, to go back to their regular lives. And Galahad had looked at them, with that same dreamy look on his face, and told them that he wasn’t going back, he was going to devote his life to good works. He’d joined the food pantry committee at one church, the hospital visits committee at another, the home goods collection committee at a third, and Lancelot didn’t know how many other things. He’d be spending his days delivering meals to shut-ins and ministering to homeless youth, now. But he said he’d miss them all, and would drop by Camelatte now and again if he could find the time.

Lancelot didn’t think he’d find the time.

He, Bors, Gawaine, and Percy explained all this sitting around the round table at Camelatte one evening. And Arthur explained to them about the selectmen. (He’d left Kay to explain about the jail visit himself. In the end, Starbucks had declined to press charges, so Arthur thought maybe he was rather a good lawyer after all.) Gary brought out a plate of pumpkin fritters, which were delicious.

“So at least one project was a success,” Gwen said, smiling.

The Starbucks had opened the previous week, and Arthur was pretty sure they were already seeing a decline in commuter traffic. How bad the decline would be, and whether the regulars would start to leave as well, only time would tell. They’d be able to hang on, at least for a while.

Outside, the last of the light faded, and the cafe windows started to reflect a perfect mirror of the scene inside. The evening had the feel of a bubble in space and time. Things weren’t the way they’d been, with Galahad gone and Lancelot’s apparent new, more thoughtful way of looking at the world. And things wouldn’t stay like this forever.

But for now, there was hot coffee and warm fritters, the easy flow of conversation as Percy imitated Lancelot’s moves at the youth soccer tournament and Baldwin and Bors argued about a book none of the others had read. There were so many people around the table that Gwen and Gawaine were having to practically shout back and forth as they brainstormed ideas for a new iced latte, and Arthur’s chair had been pushed a good eight inches from the table.

For now, they were here, round their table, right where they belonged.


End file.
